New Philosopher – July 2019

NewPhilosopher News from nowhere

here is a race to extend human
life, and much talk in scien-
tific circles that humans could
be living well past the century mark
sometime soon. In the meantime, like
clockwork, 6,300 people die every hour

• 150,000 a day, 55 million per year.
  Today, for the 360,000 people who are
  born each year, the predicted death rate
  remains at a fairly steady 100 per cent.
  The problem with life extension is
  that it’s all about stretching it out at
  the tail end. We’re talking about ex-
  tending a life from 80 to 100, or 100 to
  150 years, and not, say, an extension at
  a physical peak like the late 20s, or an
  intellectual peak like the 40s. Why not
  extend out teenagers for another dec-
  ade or so and see what mischief they
  can get into? Or what about babyhood,
  a time of joy and experimentation –
  why not add another decade on to that?

The long and the short

“For in that sleep of

death what dreams

may come,

When we have

shuffled off this

mortal coil,

Must give us pause.” 

William Shakespeare,

Hamlet

“We’vemodernised.”

What’s missing from the life ex-

tension discussion is that rather than

focusing simply on the number of years

we have on Earth, we should be look-

ing at the quality of those years – what

we’re doing with our allotted time.

Death, 1914, by Teodors Ūders

Beethoven produced some 722

works in 44 productive years; a social

media addict would need millennia to

replicate that feat. As Seneca writes,

“it is not that we have a short space of

time, but that we waste much of it”.